Using electrochemistry instead of toxic or expensive reagents to promote chemical reactions is very appealing for economic and environmental reasons, and represents a major driving force for research efforts in modern chemistry. Here we show that we can control chemical reactions using electrochemical potential at single-molecule level by using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) techniques operating at room temperature and solution environment. We demonstrate that we can couple a series of aniline derivatives and form azobenzenes through electrooxidation at the nanostructured Au STM tip.  We detect the products in situ by measuring the molecular conducting features which are compared with analogous measurements of the ex-situ prepared azobenzene products. We further demonstrate that we can selectively create geometric isomers and complex molecular architectures by a sequential coupling of complementary anilines. These studies not only reveal important electrochemical phenomena at nanoscale, but also provide new reaction pathways that can be translated into real-world applications.

Using electrochemistry for chemical reactions at the single molecule level

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.